Rila Hotel

“best ski place to stay in Borovets!”

Everything was great, as usual. SPA, personnel, rooms, room temperature, ski wardrobe. Nice lobby bar with a fireplace

“Excellent service”

Excellent hotel with everything and more that you need. Staff and management very helpful and always have a sile on their face. Definitely recommend

“Good value for money”

Rila hotel We travelled here as a family and stayed in two rooms. We arrived slightly ahead of check-in time and was kindly advised by the reception that our rooms were ready, they had conveniently given us two rooms next to each other which was great. We had paid for a slope facing view. These … more

Rila hotel We travelled here as a family and stayed in two rooms. We arrived slightly ahead of check-in time and was kindly advised by the reception that our rooms were ready, they had conveniently given us two rooms next to each other which was great. We had paid for a slope facing view. These definitely have better views than the ones on the other side overlooking the car park. However, we were lucky as we came out at the back end of ski season and several reviews mention how noisy these rooms are due to their proximity to the outside hotel bar just below the balcony - and we were indeed just one floor above where the DJ set is placed on this outside terrace bar. I have summarised the mostly good and some areas of improvement below: - the hotel has great facilities - gym, spa, pool, hairdressers, arcade, nightclub, bar, restaurants, kids club. - The hotel is clean and relatively modern throughout. - The hotel room had acoustics, we never heard our family next door. - The hotel lobby has a lovely open fireplace and bar with live music occasionally which creates a lively atmosphere. The drinks we had here including the smoothies were great, as were the pastries/cakes/icecreams available. - The kid’s club was great value. (Operates from 8.30-16.30 for €50 a day). - The spa was vast - Turkish baths, saunas, steam rooms, heated lounging beds. Dressing gowns and slippers in the hotel room were greatly received. - The location of the hotel is perfect for the slopes and surrounding bars and restaurants. - On the day of our son’s birthday the placed a little cake and Teddy in the room for him which was really lovely. - The kid’s ski club (boro kids) was great for our son, he really loved it. Although only one supervising member of staff spoke English. I often saw the children coming in and out of the hotel to the Boro Kids park and was quite anxious seeing the small children walking several metres behind staff on a vehicular road each day. Thankfully I wasn’t skiing so was able to cast an eye over my child during these periods. Areas for improvement: - the food in the buffet restaurant was awful. The worst hotel buffet I have ever experienced and that includes very budget hotels. Considering the vibe of the rest of the hotel it was shocking how bad the food was. The lasagne was made with a Spam type beef meat not mince. The breakfast crepes were stiff, the chips tasted like they had been reheated, the salad tasted stale. None of the food tasted or felt freshly cooked but as though it had been reheated from the morning. I struggled to find anything nice to eat every evening but as I had paid for the half board I forced myself to eat something. - As many other reviewers have mentioned the hotel room was warm every night and we had to resort to leaving our balcony door ajar at night as there were no windows. - The Health and safety of the kid’s entertainment room was worrying - there was no proper account of which kids entered the play area other than a scribbled register on the desk near the entrance which parents would note the child’s name. The 3 “entertainers” that were in the room were extremely poor. One employee had his feet up on a chair whilst he scrolled on his phone. Another just nonchalantly sat in the corner of the room next to the main entertainer who sat on his laptop like a wannabe DJ playing Ibiza House music to a room full of toddlers and young children and then would occasionally get up and do some weird dancing right in the faces of the children much to their bemusement. No activities were set-up for the children to partake in and the entertainers didn’t interact with the children at all. I heard from other parents that their young children were not supervised by the staff and they found them wandering around the hotel by themselves. Parents leave their children in this room at their own risk as the supervising staff don’t prioritise child safety! - The pool lifeguard was often sat with his feet up on a chair not paying attention to the pool, sometimes there wasn’t even a lifeguard. The hotel did not enforce the pool rule of under 12’s not allowed to use the jacuzzi so in peak times there would be about 10 children jumping and splashing around in the jacuzzi like it was bath time. - the hotel room shower flooded our bathroom everyday as the shower screen is not long enough to avert the shower spray so we had to use most of our allocated bathroom towels each day just to mopping up the drenched floor.

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